the double teams were sporadic from that chart so my assessment is still correct. and dwight was in foul trouble. dwight howard rarely gets double team help, and even john feign wrote orlando is one of the few teams who rarely double yao and play him straight up.
I disagree that T-Mac should be touching the ball more than Yao. Check out Blinebury's live game blog at the Chronicle for last night's game. When the Rockets run the inside-out game through Yao the offense picks up and things get easier. I'm not sure I'd say that it's flowing right now but it surely looks better than the crap that's passed for an offense earlier in the season. Bottom line the Rockets should not be running the offense through T-Mac unless he's planning on becoming a low post player. To me that means Yao gets more touches than T-Mac. Either the Rockets are playing inside-out or they're not. If they are then there's no excuse for Yao not touching the ball on almost every Rockets trip down the floor. If they're planning on standing around the three point line and passing the ball around the perimeter that's another story--but who wants to see that?
There's two issues here: one is how many shots Yao takes per game. The other is how many times he touches the ball. If the Rockets are playing inside-out then Yao touches the ball almost every single time down the court, period. That means a number of touches comparable to what he got last night against Miami. I would argue that the last three games have shown how good the Rockets can be if they a) run the offense through Yao and b) play inside-out.
Just because Tracy is touching the ball more doesn't mean its not inside-out. Clyde probably touched the ball more than dream. Kobe probably touched it more than shaq. Guards, especially playmakers touch the ball more than post players. Now if that's too hard for you to understand being the cheerleader of yao's fanclub, then oh well.
Orlando doubled him 4 out of 8 possessions (that Yao touched the ball) in the crucial 4th quarter of the game. I chose to believe my own eyes.
i agree with you if yao can play like this and make great decisions like this, no doubt. if he continues to make decisions with the ball like he has, yao should touch it more. my problem is yao has stretches like this every year, but he'll also have stretches like v. boston or portland where you'll just shake your head (teams that play him physical, front him...). the last 3 teams have really played porous D on yao (wiz doubled him with midgets, orlando doubled sporadically and never try to front him, and miami double with short guards). so yao's not gonna play like this all year. you also forgot the fact that yao went for some long stretches throughout the game not really involved b/c others were doing their thing. so therefore, when yao did get the ball, it's harder to hone in on him (see the orlando game, yao was not that much involved from the 2nd to mid-4th quarter but our offense was still efficient). the point that you don't understand is that to be a great team, we can't run it through one guy consistently (none of our guys are really franchise players like a kobe or lebron or a chris paul). we need balance. We can't just play inside out and pound the ball into yao all the time. when tracy gets healthier, the high post offense is still extremely lethal (see the offensive efficiency last yr when yao went out and the utah playoffs series). we still haven't ran the offense through artest in the post a lot and that's something else we can consider. right now, yao's feeling it. so yao's gonna get the most touches. when he struggles, tracy or ron will pick it up. none of these 3 guys are kobes/lebrons/pauls who can just tear up every team.
If T-Mac touches the ball twice per possession and Yao touches it once, whatever. But if the Rockets are going to play inside-out than the center needs to touch the ball on almost every possession. Yao's the inside part of the inside-out offense. That means the chart for every game should look something like the chart for the Miami game. There's no way that Yao's been touching the ball on almost every possession. That's the issue. If the Rockets don't want to play inside-out, that's another story. Probably one with a really sad ending.
And get ready to taste playoff failure again. Really good teams have an identity. They know who they are and they know what their ball game is. They're confident in playing that ball game, even if they lose sometimes, because they know that their game is going to get them more wins than losses. The Rockets can't just decide they're an inside-out team one night and then throw that to the winds the next night. The only way they're going to get anywhere is to play their game, night in and night out. The other thing is that Yao's improved play of late is really on the team as a whole. Adelman and the Rockets are getting pretty crafty about getting the ball in to Yao with a little strong side/weak side misdirection.
inside-out works if yao is dominant EVERY single game. if he can play like this every single game, every playoff game, nobody would doubt the inside-out game with yao as the centerpiece. yao has to prove it. but b/c it hasn't worked, that's why morey has built this team ON BALANCE. we're not a one-man wrecking crew (or 2 or 3) anymore. this team is built to win on balance. are you seriously gonna play inside-out if we play utah again in the playoffs? or are you not going to milk the artest mismatch (if ak47 is on tmac). again, we have a lot of weapons now where we have multiple mismatches throughout a game. the past few games, yao has the mismatch so we're going to him. it's as simple as that. we're a balanced team. we go to whoever is feeling it.
Badgerfan, have you ever played ball past jr high? Its impossible for any team in the pro's for any player to touch the ball in the post every trip. Think about this, the rox play Boston and front with Perkins and stick KG right behind him. What do the team do? a. reverse the ball. b.keep holding the ball until perkins get tired off fronting. c. pass to scola because he's open. That's what basketball is. Its fluid and reactionary. Teams can always take a post player out the game offensively especially a guy like yao. It was harder to take fream or shaq out the game because they had incredible strength and stamina and they could run the floor and beat teams down the floor. Yao can't or don't do those things so you pretty much know where he is on the court.
what's boston offensive identity? they have a different star who steps up every game, every series? it was KG in the first 2 rounds. it was pierce in the 3rd round. it was pierce and allen in the finals with kg nowhere to be seen. like i said, a balanced offense is harder to stop. see the lakers this year. kobe's points per game is way down. his usage rating is way down. they've blown teams out when kobe scores less and takes less shots and touches less while when kobe took 30 shots, they've lost to the pistons. boston's identities were DEFENSE AND REBOUNDING on one end and BALANCE on the other. that should be our identity too. we're following their recipe by adding artest. so i'm sure we're following their other steps too.
exactly, if yao was more athletic, then we wouldn't have this argument. yao would already have gone down as the best big man of this era and we would have tons of playoff success by now. but you're right on the point that if teams focus on taking yao out, they can do that. so when teams do that, you just DO NOT POUND THE BALL to yao.
No, that is completely wrong. Inside-out works if the defense collapses on Yao and the Rockets as a whole are able to get the ball to the open guy. What you don't seem to understand is that the Rockets don't have to score off of Yao assists. I keep telling you and telling you that the Rockets can take two or three passes to find the open guy and it doesn't make a difference but for whatever reason you don't seem capable of understanding that. Here's what Hollinger had to say in another thread: "They survived this one for two reasons. First, Yao Ming destroyed a Lilliputian Heat front line with 28 points, 12 rebounds, and four assists, not to mention numerous kickouts from double-teams that led to a second or third pass to an open shooter."
I beg to differ on both your accounts but we are both entitled to our own opinions. Why do you think leebigez and CCR started these type of threads? Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question.
This is supposed to be a motion offense. One of the hallmarks of the Princeton offense is that on every trip down the floor just about every player will touch the ball. Granted Adelman's not implementing a pure Princeton in Houston but I think it's a safe bet that he still wants a ton of ball movement. And even in the JvG era the strategy was simple--get the ball in to Yao and exploit the double or mismatch. If the Celts are doubling Yao before he gets the ball then no problem, mission accomplished. You may not think that pounding the ball in to Yao is a good idea but clearly NBA level coaches disagree.
i agree with this assessment. but yao doesn't always make the cross-court passes like he has done b/c better defensive teams don't double with midgets or just let yao get whatever position he wants. the better teams will play him tougher. again, if your scenario works, JVG would still be here and we would have advanced past the first round in 06-07. yao got 18-19 shots that series with 10 fts a game (that's around 25 shots a game) on single coverage. his usage rating that year was 29, which mean he touched the ball A LOT for a big man. morey and the team know that. that's why we keep adding better players. that's why we added another all-star who can create for himself.
pounding the ball into yao every possession is not a good idea. if you're really a rockets fan, you would acknowledge that, unless it's hakeem or shaq. however, establishing yao for stretches to open up the game for other players is a great idea. then when those guys get off, and you re-establish yao again, yao can get off.
What you don't understand is that when teams double Yao before he gets the ball that is mission accomplished. Somewhere a Rocket is open and a competent offense will find that open player. Doesn't anyone remember the big improvement the Rockets went through last year when Scola replaced Hayes in the starting lineup? Suddenly the Rockets could make the other team pay for doubling Yao. On the other hand basketball if a fluid and dynamic game. If the Rockets' opponents are content to let a Rocket take open shots all night with no defender that's not too bad. That's probably not going to happen though and that's when the Rockets have to remember to get the ball back to Yao.
